NIP-V5 sign Rookie, Karsa, form new roster

Victory Five – Ninjas in Pyjamas sign a veteran top side with the hopes of getting success since joining the league. Before the end of the 2021, the Macao organization Victory Five announced a merger with Swedish organization Ninjas in Pyjamas.

Experts and fans were unsure of how this merger would pan out as it was unknown as to how this changes how exactly the organization will be run. Victory Five does not exactly have the best of records in the LPL– in 2019 spring when the team joined the league they were 13th with the 4 – 11 record, in the summer of that year they were 12th with a 5 – 10 record.

Mixed performance

In Spring 2020, Victory Five was dead last– 17th, with 0 wins and 16 series losses. They only had one game win throughout the regular season and 32 game losses. After some changes to the roster, they placed fifth, with an 11 – 5 record. In the playoffs, they also placed 5th, narrowly missing out on a spot in the regional qualifier and missing an opportunity to get to the world championship.

After their brief success, however, Victory five seemed to not do as well anymore. In the spring they placed 12th, despite getting some rather good players in their roster. In the summer, they were not able to keep these players, and once again had 0 series wins throughout the season. This time, however, their record was a bit better– three game wins, with the same 32 game losses.

After the merger with Ninjas in Pyjamas, it seemed like the organization had more plans to be a bit more competitive. For the 2022 season, V5 signed former Nongshim RedForce top laner Lee “Rich” Jae-won, former Top Esports jungler Hung “Karsa” Hao-Hsuan, Invictus Gaming substitute jungler Li “XLB” Xiao-Long, Ying “Photic” Qi-Shen from Top Esports’ challenger team.

The new roster

Guo “ppgod” also came back from his short stint in Bilibili Gaming, and Victory Five’s best signing is arguably Song “Rookie” Eui-jin. One of the best middle laners in the world, Rookie is of course well-renowned in his role as he won the 2018 world championship, and made it into the semifinal of 2019 worlds.

Rich is an excellent top laner who can usually play the weak side of the map, but has some problems with his champion pool. Karsa is an excellent ganking jungler, who usually paths excellently to support his laners. Not much is known about how Photic is as a bottom laner, but ppgod is a support that is good with initiating, and usually links up with the jungler for vision setups.

Rookie, as has been mentioned, is very good at his role, and can play almost any champion, which already means that he is a valuable asset in the drafting phase. He is also capable of acquiring leads for himself, which means that he can spread said lead to the rest of the team. There will probably be some growing pains as the bottom lane may be exploitable, but the top side is very proficient at what they do. Given the right circumstances, this team can do well, but only time will tell.